What is CVE-2021-3605?

CVE-2021-3605 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Openexr, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2021-08-25.

How severe is CVE-2021-3605?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.

Buffer overflow in Openexr

CVE-2021-3605

There's a flaw in OpenEXR's rleUncompress functionality in versions prior to 3.0.5. An attacker who is able to submit a crafted file to an application linked with OpenEXR could cause an out-of-bounds read. The greatest risk from this flaw is to application availability.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2021-08-25 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.010 (61.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 62nd percentile — 61.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.010 · newest: 0.010 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Openexr
Debian Linux — versions 10.0, 11.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — versions 8.0
Openexr — versions OpenEXR 3.0.5

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/202210-31 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
www.debian.org/security/2022/dsa-5299 (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/12/msg00022.html (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-3605?: CVE-2021-3605 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Openexr, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2021-08-25.
How severe is CVE-2021-3605?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.